Although thumb-sucking behaviors of infants are caused by an instinctive behavior or an emotional factor, if such behaviors persist for a long time, side effects such as dental anomalies like an openbite and a malocclusion in upper and lower teeth, teeth development disorder, a finger inflammation, and a risk of infection due to an insertion of a contaminated finger into an oral cavity may occur. Furthermore, psychological side effects such as psychological instabilities and habits may occur.
Although various methods such as being scolded from parents, applying a bitter medicine, and attaching a band-aid are used in the past so as to prevent the thumb-sucking behaviors of the infants, since the methods forcibly suppress only thumb-sucking desire of the infants and thus are psychologically undesirable, the methods may not be fundamental solutions.
Also, in recent years, although there has been an attempt to wear a separate deterrent device on the fingers of the infants so as to reduce or eliminate a frequency of the thumb-sucking behaviors of the infants, such a deterrent device according to the related art may have side effects in excessively restricting movement of the finger or festering a portion of the finger, on which the finger and the deterrent device are in contact to each other, due to insufficient ventilation. Thus, such a deterrent device may have some limitations in which the treatment time is hard to be expected, and the therapeutic effect is also low.
Therefore, a thumb-sucking deterrent device is required to be developed, which is capable of reducing a frequency of the thumb-sucking behaviors of the infants without restricting free movement of the finger of the infant, giving superior air-permeability, and preventing saliva of the oral cavity from contacting the finger so that the finger does not fester in spite of wearing the thumb-sucking deterrent device for a long time.